Theophile Gautier Quotes

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal... one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly.

Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.

Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!

The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.

Yes I have loved, as no one on earth ever loved, with an insensate and furious love, so violent that I wonder it did not break my heart

The cat makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude, melancholy and toil.

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.

Modesty was made for the ugly.

Books follow morals, and not morals books.

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.

The cat is a dilettante in fur.

Sometimes he sits at your feet looking into your face with an expression so gentle and caressing that the depth of his gaze startles you.

I was born to travel and write verse.

[A cat] will make itself the companion of your hours of work, of loneliness, or of sadness.

Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist.

If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your friend but never your slave.

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat.

Once [a cat] has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection!

No one is truly dead until they are no longer loved.

To extract beauty from one's own milieu is one of the most difficult tasks of art.

Brevity never fatigues; therefore, brevity is always a welcome guest.

The arts teach and moralise by their beauty alone, not by translating a philosophical or social formula. For the truly artistic person, painting has itself as it's purpose, which is quite enough.

Critical lice are like body lice, which desert corpses to seek the living.

Sooner barbarity than boredom.

[A cat] will lie the whole evening on your knee, purring and happy in your society.

[Great artists] do not copy what they see, but what they desire.

The word poet literally means maker: anything which is not well made doesn't exist.

I am a man for whom the outside world exists.

High art alone is eternal and the bust outlives the city.

It may well be that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet and their like contain beauties which escape the notice of such old romantic heads as ours, already streaked with silver threads.

What I write is not for little girls.

Yes, the work comes out more beautiful from a material that resists the process, verse, marble, onyx, or enamel.

Fortune loves to give bedroom slippers to people with wooden legs, and gloves to those with no hands.

When we love - we grow

It is gentle manners which prove so irresistible in women.

I am one of those for whom superfluity is a necessity.

White men should exhibit the same insensibility to moral tortures that red men do to physical torments.

Only that which serves no end is beautiful; everything useful is ugly.

Literature has nothing to do with usefulness; the most useful place in any house is the toilet.

You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.

Cats are the tigers of us poor devils.

Our busy age does not always have time to read, but it always has time to look.

What well-bred woman would refuse her heart to a man who had just saved her life? Not one; and gratitude is a short cut which speedily leads to love.

With all women gentleness is the most persuasive and powerful argument.

Good heavens! what a foolish thing is this pretended perfectibility of the human race which is continually being dinned into our ears!

To love is to admire with the heart to admire is to love with the mind.